Not That Kind of Person

I linked this fab podcast I just discovered yesterday. I feel stupid for not knowing about it earlier but I don’t really know about anything so I don’t think anyone should blame me.

Anyway, it’s January 3rd, and so it’s time for me to lodge a lament. And that is that I am not in the position to buy any kind of planner or new journal this year.

Long ago in the very far distant past, in a house not very far from here, I came to the end of yet another leather bound blank book. I have been the sort of person to occasionally dash off a couple of journal entries a week, when I remember to. Enough to fill a book every two years or so. So there I was, it was the new year and I had finished my journal And my calendar and so I had to have a new one. Had To. And so, minutes later, standing in front of the wall of journals at Barnes and Noble, ripe for persuasion, I devoted myself to a methodical look up and down the rows. I picked up everything. I pondered. I considered. I tried to be reasonable. And then, weighing all the options, of course I picked the fattest and most alluring of all the books–red cover, thick, comprised of graphing paper.

Graphing Paper–you know, pages filled with little tiny squares, neatly and evenly marching their ordered way along–was the substance of my school life in Africa. It was the only kind of paper that we had. Big sheets of it that folded over so that you really had four pages instead of only two. You could write So Much on those pages, and mostly I think that I did. Whenever I have the chance to go to Africa, which is only like once a decade, I always fill the bottom of my suitcase with those big reams of paper. I know that bringing paper to America is stupid, but America doesn’t understand the question of paper–its size and shape and the need for lots of tiny squares.

Anyway, there I was, holding this extremely thick book in my hands, trying to think how to explain to my husband that This Was The One. He doesn’t even see why anyone needs to write in books. He tears off bits of envelopes, scribbles on them, and then flings them down to be lost forever. Normally I wouldn’t think of trying to justify this sort of purchase to him, but we had a Barnes and Noble gift card to Share and this book was going to be more than my half. He gazed at me with a jaundiced eye, his hands grasping a big fat history book that could easily and more cheaply be had on a kindle. We stared each other down, which is the meaning of marriage. And of course I won. What kind of a man makes his wife put down her red, graph paper journal so he can have his history book? Not a man who expects to be happy in this life.

I brought it home and wrote the date in the front. January 3, 2012. That’s right, I’ve been roiling through this book for…hang on, let me count it up again….four going on five years now.

But it’s not because I don’t write! It’s because shortly after buying this beautiful red book, I started blogging so much that I had nothing left to write down by hand. I was left copying my school schedule over and over on the precise and calming lines. I copied out every text for my devotional. I copied out school book lists and plans. And now, lately, I’ve taken to writing down church attendance figures, and then coloring in the squares to fill up the rest of the page. Once I learned about bullet journaling I began making lists and dots and numbering the pages and drawing out my calendar. Dedicated, devoted work on this book I’ve spent. So guess how far I still have to go?
………….
Half.
I still have half the book to fill.
And here’s the thing. After four, now five years, I Cannot give up. I cannot go out and buy any other kind of book because that would mark me out as That Person, that person who buys a beautiful book, writes in a few of the pages, and then goes and buys another book. I have been that person but I Am Not that person any more. I do not litter the Internet with blogs. I do not fill up my house with unwritten in books. If there is one thing I do in this life, so help me, it will be to Fill This Book.

But seriously, I need more different kinds of lists to write down. And new ways to draw my calendar. And ideas of stuff to copy out. If I stick with my current way it will be another five years Or More before I have finished it. And by then Barnes and Noble might not even exist. Who knows, I may be picking through the rubble of nuclear holocaust, looking for some paper and a pen.

Pip pip.